


Move Along

by Gildedmuse



Category: Rent (2005), Rent - Larson
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Challenge Response, Character Study, Gen, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 02:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18791326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedmuse/pseuds/Gildedmuse
Summary: A series of shorts reflecting how the other bohemians see the filmmaker.April contemplates how little she knows Mark.In the days Maureen knows will lead up to their break up, she's still feeling nervous about taking these steps away from her old life with Mark.In her hospital bed, Angel wants more time than she got to be with her friends. She needs Mark to help fill in all those months.Coming home from Santa Fe, Roger is worried his best friend won't be there when he needs him the most.





	1. Only In Hours

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted to LJ in 2006 and filled my Fanfic100 table for "Hours", "Days", "Weeks", "Months", "Years"]

It feels, April realizes as she sits on the dirty old couch with the phone pressed against her ear, it feels like in all this time that she's been with Roger she's only spent - maybe - a couple hours getting to know Mark.

 

It's this sort of odd thought that buzzes through her head as she listens to Emily's small, soft voice broken with this fear and tears. The phone is resting against April's ear, but her attention wonders elsewhere - anywhere else but here with Emily's words. She finds Mark with his camera on the table, carefully changing a roll of film. He looks like a child with his face bunched up in concentration, frowning as he pulls the metal of the machine apart. April wonders if he can feel her watching. He never looks up, anyway, as if April isn't there at all.

 

Maybe that says something about her. How worthless she is in this world that she can blend in so seamlessly with this dirty old couch that not even the filmmaker can find her. April curls up against herself, hugging her knees to her chest. She used to have a chest. Now she has a frame, a skeleton frame that is dripping with skin. She use to have thick, wild hair and a smile that glowed and a brilliant body that she could put in anything she wanted and she'd look perfect.

 

Now she looks like one of those third world children they show on TV. One of those babies who is starving and can't fend for itself, and won't you send money to help take care of her? If you were a good person, a decent person, you would care. Someone? Anyone? Just a dollar a day, just your care and commitment. That's all it would take, and April is still wasting away.

 

April's been expecting this call from Emily for a while. She's just been ignoring it, getting it out of her mind with smack in her system. The sort of drug that can take care of anything. Except for how every day she looks worse; smaller, beat up, sicker. The heroin can stop her from caring, but it doesn't stop time from wearing away at her until she becomes invisible. Like she is now on the couch with Mark frowns over his camera, not turning his head even when April shifts around and the couch frame creaks beneath her. Not when Emily sobs into the phone, the sound echoing throughout the loft and April's head.

 

Mark keeps staring down at his camera, his fingers cautions and precise like he's tuning and instrument or painting the Mona Lisa. There is no room for mistakes. There is no time to look up and notice a ghost of a person like April.

 

Then, he's always been like this. Not just now, when April is nothing and has been replaced by this worthless, starving, dying child unable to take care of herself. April has been with Roger for over a year now and Mark, the best friend, the good guy, the drinking buddy, the one Roger is always mentioning here or there, he hardly ever looked at her. When April is with Roger, Mark will only look and speak with his best friend - sometimes not even that much. Sometimes he'll just walk away, make an excuse to get out. When it's just Mark and April, and it rarely is, it's quiet like this. A long silence dragging out between them as Mark does what he has to, never paying any attention to her.

 

At first she thought it was jealousy. This was back when she hardly knew Roger or Mark, of course she hardly knows Mark now. Only enough to know she was wrong, it seems. See, at first she thought she had taken Roger from him. Some sort of silly crush, maybe, that he'd been harboring on his best friend or, perhaps, they use to mess around when they were up in the loft alone and now that Roger had a girlfriend that had stopped. April really wasn't sure what there relationship was, but she knew she must have taken it from Mark. It just made sense with how he seemed to go out of his way to avoid seeing them together. Jealous, April assumed and being who she was, she played it up. Climbing all over Roger, showing off their affection when Mark was near. It wasn't malice, or it was but not on purpose. Just instinct to mark a claim as hers to anyone who might try and take it away. She did it, too, when the groupies and just random girls thinking he was cute would wonder up after shows. It's the same idea that she had with Mark, that he was some sort of competition.

 

Looking back, that had been a pretty silly thing to think. Now Mark is the last person she would expect to be jealous. She's seen him and the guys Maureen sleeps with, how he warns them off but doesn't seem to hate them. Not like Roger hates the girls April flirts with, and that is much more harmless than what Maureen does. Mark doesn't get jealous, only upset and if April had 'stolen' Roger from him he wouldn't avoid speaking with her, but avoid Roger when he was with her, and pester Roger when he wasn't. As far as April knows, he's never done that. No, it isn't jealousy that makes Mark ignore her.

 

On the other end of the phone, Emily is crying to her, like April cares about some girl and some boy she hasn't talked to in over a year. April keeps watching Mark as he slides the new reel of film in place. She feels detached, unable to connect with herself. Is this how Mark feels all the time?

 

Everyone knows he's the director, the behind the scenes guy. He notices everything, Roger tells April once or twice or every time Mark points something out, really. It's like he watches life as though it's a film he needs to be able to edit down later, always looking for the mistakes and details. Mark is the stage director, April thinks now as she listens to Emily's sobbing and feels nothing. When the curtain goes down, when the actors are all gone, he'll still be there. The end of the play will not be the end of him. For April, it's different. She's the lead actress, the Prima Donna. She carries the action and the action carries her. This is the first time, sober, that she's every felt so detached from her usually bright and fierce emotions. It's a cold realization, knowing what will happen when those emotions come back, hitting and clawing at this numb feeling that has settled. Ripping her apart.

 

Mark, she thinks, will never have to deal with that. They may not be friends, they may not know each other that well, but April has been around long enough to pick up on certain bits and pieces about the mysterious face behind the camera. She knows how his work is all consuming, and when Maureen is out trying to get the attention he isn't giving her from other guys, he hides behind that camera. When Roger and her are shooting up and Mark can see that it is killing them, he hides behind that camera. He keeps himself out of the scene, so he never has to deal with it or feel guilty about all these ruined people in his life.

 

It's his fault, really.

 

Slowly that numb feeling starts to slip away, and April realizes that, yes, it's Mark's fault. It's his fault that his girlfriend needs to find attention elsewhere. He knows she's cheating, and he could stop her by just giving her some time but he doesn't. He hides from it instead, so Maureen just tries harder to find some attention. It's his fault that this is happening to Roger. He never could look at April, he always knew, and he never stopped any of this.

 

He gave Roger freedom instead of putting his camera down in stopping his best friend. He gave him this death sentences.

 

In over a year, April has only known Mark for maybe a few hours, and already she hates him. It's a nice, hate, though. One that places the blame somewhere else. Anywhere but her.

 

"He's dead," is what Emily is saying through her sobbing. "God, April... You... You probably have it to. You guys slept together, right? I just.... I can't believe this."

 

Of course she has it. She's known, suspected, tried to ignore it but now there is no way around this. She's sick, she's dead. She might as well not even be here now. Wasting away, a starving child, no one calling in to help her. Chris, Emily says, he looked like a corpse. She couldn't even look at him, she says. It's shallow, but she couldn't stand being around him when he died. She just wanted it to happen as quick as possible, so she didn't have to be there. That's why she's calling April, really. She just didn't want to be in the room with his body. It's so gross, so obscene. She can't even love him anymore. She needs a hit. Doesn't April understand what this means?

 

Emily's voice breaking down in her ear. What a friend, to wait until Chris is near death to call April, the girl she hasn't spoken to in a year, just to tell her about her fate. One day it's going to be Roger on the phone, not wanting to go back into the hospital room. Roger who is sick to his stomach, can't even look at her. Roger who no longer loves her, is just staying around out of a twisted sense of pity. April in that cold, sterile room unable to look at herself and wishes she was dead.

 

No, that isn't going to be her. This skeleton isn't her. She's beautiful, she's young. She is going to be like that forever.

 

Mark picks up his camera and sets the old reel of film carefully away in his bag. He knows, she knows that he has to know someone other than her has to have noticed. but he never stopped them. It must be nice, being so detached that he can just go out and film after all of this. April could never be that removed from herself, from everything and everyone around her like Mark seems to be. Well, she will be and Roger... She wonders if Mark can take good care of Roger. No, he'll probably not care at all. He hasn't yet.

 

"Mark." Her voice is loud in the large loft, more broken then she means for it to be. She hangs up the phone with Emily still crying. Mark looks up, caught before his escape from the door. "Yeah?" he looks almost confused, like he doesn't expect April to be there or speak to him. Surprised, maybe, that death has a voice at all.

 

She's only known him for hours, maybe, and here she is saying her last goodbye to him. She can't wait for Roger to get back from practice or go see Melody or Rachel at work. She needs to do this now, before she's so sick that Roger can't love her. She could at least tell him something important, something to tell to her baby when he gets home to find her. Immortalized. Forever loved.

 

"Have a good day," she says, voice steadier now. She even manages to twist her lips into a smile, nodding towards his camera.

 

Mark smiles back and for a moment April has this feeling that no, he doesn't know everything. It's quickly gone, though, because Mark can hardly look at her even while smiling. "Thanks, April," he says, turning to leave the loft. To leave April to do what he must know she has to do. Looking away, like he will when Roger does the same, she figures. Always looking away. It must be nice, not having to care at all. "You, too."


	2. The Days Between Us

Maureen figures that Mark has no idea these are their last days together, and then she is getting off this ship.

 

As far as Maureen is concerned, Mark hardly even notices anything at all. At least, he never seems to take notice when she is all but screaming for his attention. Screaming for his attention by showing off her cleavage to some random guy at the bar, and maybe that wasn't the best way to get Mark to stop playing around with his camera. Playing around with his camera, Maureen snorts at the saying. It's what Roger calls it when Mark masturbates. With the way he treats his cameras, it might as well be sex.

 

See, Maureen isn't a total slut. A tease and a flirt, yes, but who doesn't want some extra attention now and then? Who doesn't want to feel loved, and for as obsessed with her as he acted Mark could never really do that for her. Make her feel like the center of the universe, like she doesn't need to flirt around for some affection. He is too detached for that. He looks past Maureen, not really seeing her for anything other than an obsession, someone to put on film. She's an actress and that is what she wants, right?

 

Only... Only what if she wants more than just attention from some cold camera?

 

So now she's just giving up all together, going to stop clinging to their sinking relationship and getting out while she still can. And, okay, maybe it would be nice if she straight out (she giggles a bit at the thought now) told him that this is it. After this, she is gone. And not in her usual come-back-a-week-later way, either. She can't do this anymore. She likes Mark, loves him, even, in a certain sort of way. Still, this is insane. He spends all his time with that damn camera of his or writing scripts or at Roger's bedside as he shakes and vomits and screams out for April. Yeah, she gets that Roger needs help but, really, it's just the guilt that April killed herself. It's been a year, for God's sake. The drugs aren't the problem anymore. The sickness shouldn't be, either. Collins has it, after all, and he doesn't spend all night in his room crying. Just Roger and his overacting and exaggerating how much of April's suicide had been his fault. Maureen understands that Mark feels the need to help him, as his best friend, but sometimes she wishes he would just slap Roger and drag him somewhere. Maybe that club they use to go to. The Cat Scratch Club with the strippers. Find him someone to fall in love with and, snap, he'll be fine.

 

She's getting off topic, even in her own thoughts. The point is maybe she should tell him, give him some sort of hint. She really doesn't think he knows. He never seems to notice much when it came to her, and that was part of the problem. Maureen needs to feel loved, to feel noticed. At first Mark was the perfect boyfriend. He would film her, talk about casting her in some part and how they'd be famous together. He had these big dreams, but it turns out these dreams were just a way to get him through filming.

 

Oh, he can be a great boyfriend when he wants to be. He'll do what she asks, he'll smile at her and call her beautiful. All those small things that girls want. He doesn't even complain that much when she flirts. Well, that was more part of the problem. She needs to feel beautiful, but even when she gets the attention she wishes Mark should still be there, scowling at the guy she's hanging over and pulling her way. Isn't that how it should go? To prove that he still finds her interesting instead of just letting it happen! She wants jealousy! She wants sparks! She wants to know he loves her enough to stop her! Yes, that is part of their problem.

 

But only a part of it.

 

"Maureen, are you sure you want to do this?" Mark asks, pushing his glasses up his nose and fixing her with this look. Almost like he's afraid of her determination. Maureen knows she gets a little scary when she wants something. This is serious stuff, though, something people should just shrug aside thinking that it's just the air headed plan of a self absorbed diva. If anyone is a self absorbed diva it, well, maybe sometimes it's Maureen but mostly, she thinks, it's Roger. Sure, when she gets this loud and fierce about something she sort of act like more of an attention whore than usual, but Maureen doesn't let herself think that way. She's good believing what she wants, like how she swears she's doing this for the homeless and not because, well, it's important to Mark, and with all the stress in his life that Maureen's about to make worse, he deserves something.

 

She vaguely wonders if doing this out of guilt makes her a bad person, then dismisses it. It's a cause, damnit, and it's a cause that will be important to her.

 

"Don't YOU ALWAYS say how HORRIBLE it is that people treat the homeless like ANIMALS?" Maureen asks, punctuating her words just like her old acting teacher, Mr. Cauldwell, taught her. She's really trying to get into this. "YOU'RE not just going to LET some yuppie SCUM like BENNY take away these people's HOME, are you?"

 

Mark bites at his lip, looking wholly uncomfortable and Maureen smirks a bit, already knowing she's won despite the fact that he hasn't said anything yet. Maybe, she worries, he can sense that something is wrong. But, no, Mark never seems to notice much when it comes to her and, finally, with a low sigh, he relinquishes.

 

"Okay," he says, nodding solemnly and pushing at his glasses again. He looks around the empty lot where a tent city has formed. There are the ruins of some building around them, and after studying the landscape for a while he points over to the back of the lot. "There's still some of the floor left back there. We could use it as a stage."

 

"Oh, Mark!" Maureen throws herself into Mark's arms, giving him a tight hug and a messy kiss. Maybe they'll even have sex tonight, just as a sort of going away thing. Not that Mark knows she's leaving, and maybe that is cruel but Maureen can't bring herself to tell him yet. She's still going to spend a few more days with him, just a while to give him a proper goodbye. After all, she doesn't want to leave with Mark being upset with her. Never mind that he'll probably be pissed with her anyway, just for breaking up with him. Maureen isn't thinking about that.

 

Maybe, okay... Maybe she's scared. It's only right to be a little freaked out, though, right? After all, she's been with Mark for three years now. That's a long time to be with someone, even with all their little fights and breaks ups. And he's a good guy, a sweet guy, a reliable guy. He's just... well, a guy.

 

Maureen always figured it was normal, thinking girls were beautiful. Why not? She knows she's gorgeous, after all. It's not like she's small-minded. She has lesbian friends. She's even experimented before and, yeah, that was fun but she figures making out is always fun. Kind of like she's figured you're not supposed to orgasm every time you have sex, and that really isn't what sex is about anyway so much as the attention.

 

Then she started messing around with girls and, well, what if sex is about coming every time? She wouldn't argue with that.

 

She's always figured it was normal, though, thinking that girls are beautiful. After all, half naked girls seem to be everywhere, and hardly anyone talks about how gorgeous men are. Plus, guys are built sort of wrong. Too tough looking, flat and oddly angled and don't even get her started on how just plain ugly the penis can be. Not that she's ever tell Mark that. Hell, Mark's penis is kind of cute in a weird way. There is still the fact that she likes curves more and the softness that comes with women. Normal, she figured. Nothing different about her at all.

 

Amazing that it took three years in New York, flirting with hundreds of men, and finally ending up being pulled out of jail by a plus sized lesbian lawyer after protesting the opening of a new McDonalds over what use to be a locally owned café to change her mind. She pouts a little, remembering that day. Damnit, that McDonalds still got built. Mark hadn't even showed up, even after he promised. He got distracted by Roger or film or something. It doesn't matter, the point is that he hadn't been there and she'd wound up in a cell and Joanne, some random lawyer that happen to be passing by the protest site, came to her rescue.

 

The promise, Maureen explains when Joanne asks what she had been thinking, is that Maureen grown up watching protests from the sixties and seventies that her parents had been in, having loved the excitement and staging of it all. They never warned her that, really, those protests never work. Maureen is too optimists, though, to just give up and admit that good ideas and a little artistic determination can't change the world. That's what Maureen wants. Her face in people's minds, in the paper, bringing back the revolution of bohemia.

 

Off topic again, and Mark brings her back when he pulls out of the hug. He's got an erection from pressing into Maureen, shifting around a bit to try and hide it. He can be so adorable sometimes. "I'll see what I can do," he promises, and even though he knows this idea is crazy, he's going along with it.

 

That's why she's still here, giving Mark these last few days. Even if she really doesn't want to sleep with him anymore and, yeah, leading him on is a bad thing, she still loves him. He's good to her, even with the lack of attention, and he believes in her ideas even when they both know they're not going to work. She's afraid to let go of someone like that. She's afraid to let go of Mark, and give up every part of her life that he symbolizes.

 

Nobody knows she's afraid of course, and it isn't the sort of thing Maureen would let people know. She wouldn't expect Mark to know what it is like, being afraid of where you're life is going. He always seems so cut off from the rest of them, how could he possibly understand? And as frustrating as that can be, it's nice to have someone to hold onto that you know won't break down. Besides, the frustration is a lot less scary then the fear of the change.

 

But then she'll go home to Joanne, and she curl up in her arms and they'll talk and laugh and be so in love. So Maureen will end up leaving Mark, she just needs time. She knows it and Joanne knows it and everyone must know it expect for Mark. There are a lot of things like this that Mark misses, though. For a filmmaker, he can be so blind.


	3. Passing Weeks

It's weird, but once he's out of the city and into the wide, bright space of Santa Fe where he's free from all the death, the gray, the hopelessness that had suffocated him back home, all Roger can think of is New York.

 

Santa Fe is probably gorgeous, but he wouldn't know. He gets there and stays three weeks before he's turning around and coming home. All in all, he misses out on November, and that is pretty much it. It seems like the longest part of the trip is getting back to New York. Back home where everything is miserable and broken and dying all around him, and the only place Roger can imagine being happy.

 

He doesn't call. He promises everyone he will. Swears to Collins to keep in touch and, well, he can't bring himself to pick up the phone and risk thinking about Angel. Collins' Angel is Roger's Mimi, the same fate awaiting her and everything. No, he doesn't want to talk with Collins. Doesn't want to feel pain that close to home. He isn't a tough, emotionless rock star. He pretended to be, once, during the withdrawals and April. Tried for a while to act like nothing could touch him but... but... Death doesn't care if nothing can touch you. Roger has never been solid, never been stable. He isn't anyone's rock, and so he doesn't call Collins.

 

He sends a postcard to his mom. One post card, before he leaves, to tell her that he's moving out to Santa Fe. That's it. He doesn't call. He doesn't write, not really. Every time he calls it's like the fucking Spanish Inquisition. How are you doing? Are you taking your meds? What's your T-cell count. Caring, loving mom. Roger can't stand her. It's not like he's going to forget that he is dying. It doesn't slip his mind, get lost in his head for a while. Does she think she is reminding him with those phone calls? Oh, by the way, Roger. Remember that you killed April. That you're killing yourself. That you couldn't save Mimi.

 

God, Mimi.

 

Roger looks down at his notebook. He needs to finish this song for her. Needs to give her something, some last form of life to show how much she means to him. He saw her before he left. She's sick. She's dying and Roger couldn't stop that. He couldn't stop the drugs, couldn't stop her from running back to Benny. This he can do, though. Show her how much she means to him and give her some life. Mark had been right when he said... Mark....

 

Mark has been Roger's best friend since he moved in with them, four years ago and, well, Roger has been pretty nasty to him a lot. With the drugs and the guilt and withdrawal, and Mark is the only one who stuck around. Even Collins moved out, and Roger knows that hadn't all been because of him but back then, when his entire world had been ripped away from him. When he didn't have April, couldn't have drugs, knew he was dying and didn't care if he did or not. There had always been Mark to look out for him and clean up after him and force Roger to look past the pain of the withdrawal to something else, some unattainable future Roger had always figured. He still remembers Mark in the bathroom as Roger throw up and could barely keep himself kneeling with the shakes that wrecked his body. "You'll see, Roger," Mark would say, not leaving even when things got disgusting and hard and Roger just wanted to leave himself. "You're going to be happy again if you can just get through this."

 

Even though Mark had gotten him through the drugs, Roger never really believed him. He just figured they had been words to get him to stop whining and begging for smack, and maybe Mark didn't even believe them himself back then. How could he have known about Mimi? No one would have guessed that Roger could be in love again, could find a reason to live other than to drag out the guilt over killing April. Only then came Mimi with her candle and her smile and those bright, young eyes that lit up for Roger. Mark had been right. Roger could be happy again. All he needs it to get back to New York, to fix this damage he has done when he left for Santa Fe. To get Mimi back and healthy, and play this song for her.

 

He looks back to his notebook sitting across him on the seat of the worn out car he's driving back. How is Mark going to react when he gets back? He's probably pissed as hell at Roger for running off like he had. Shit, one of the few times Mark had yelled at him had been as he was leaving. He could see the hurt twisted on his friend's face, and that isn't something Roger sees often. Mark doesn't like being open with people. Roger could never figure out why, but he doesn't push. Not his place to make Mark talk about what he doesn't want to. They're best friends. They don't get on each other's backs like that, unless it's important. Mark is Roger's best friend, and he takes him as he is even with the bad habit of hiding in his work.

 

They've been friends for all this time, and Roger still doesn't know how Mark is going to react when he gets home. Maybe he'll just shrug the trip off, give Roger a few nasty looks but otherwise not comment. Only then he thinks back to his leaving, and he's never seen Mark so upset over him unless there was smack involved. Mark doesn't unleash all his emotions like that. Sure, he didn't break down but it takes knowing Mark to see how close he'd been. Then Roger had gone, just left him behind because he couldn't stand to watch this girl, his second chance at love, fade away. He couldn't blame Mark if he hated him.

 

Mark couldn't hate him, Roger decides. He closes the notebook so that it's not distracting him as he heads into the city, trying to find some place to trade in this piece of shit for a car in for some cash so that he can get his guitar back. Mark couldn't hate him, because they've been through tougher times than this and he's never given up on Roger yet. There have been points where they're freezing and starving and what money they've had Roger has thrown away on drugs. Times when Collins has told them he's positive, and Roger couldn't handle the fact that one of his friends was dying so he turned around and told him to get out, he didn't want to live with someone who was sick. And Mark knows him and he keeps staying with Roger anyway.

 

Besides, Roger thinks as he tries to get some of those scary thoughts of Mark not being there out of his head, besides they have had good times, too. Plenty of them, right? Nights when the rest of the world and all the hardships it brought along could fade out, and him and Collins and Mark and whoever else happened to be around could lie on the roof of sprawl themselves out around the loft and just enjoy each other's company. Could remember that this life they chose still has some great parts to it, like the laughing together and not feeling put off by their own sense of closeness. That was a while ago, though, and after April it changed. Roger became isolated by the guilt and the diseases and the drugs, and even though Mark had still been there it was hardly the same.

 

Did Mark blame Roger for this? The thoughts are reeling around in his head as he sells the car, taking whatever he can get for it and heading down the street towards the loft. He'll get his guitar later, when his stomach doesn't feel ready to come out his throat. Now that it's in his mind, this panic that Mark might not want him to come back, it's driving him close to turning around and heading back down again. It's stupid, to leave just because his best friend might be upset with him. Roger had never had to think about it until now.

 

Nothing clears your head like leaving everything behind, getting away from the city and everyone he'd become so familiar with. Mark, he realizes, is who he depends on more than anyone else. Trying to help Mimi to get off drugs, to get her healthy and safe, that was all because of what Mark did for him. Roger wouldn't have even let her in that night, if Mark hadn't managed to save just a bit of his old self, the one that can still write songs about love and mean them. Mark saved him, and then Roger ran away after yelling at him, accusing him of being a coward for staying behind his camera instead of doing all that he wanted to do.

 

Roger frowns as he finds the door to the loft still broken from New Years. Mimi and Benny, that's when he really figured out about then. Fuck, he hates that guy. For how he took Mark's friendship and throw it out the second he got a decent, yuppie job. For taking Mimi away from Roger when he'd wanted to help get her off smack. Mark had been right. He let Benny get between them. He let Mimi run off to him, only after he accused her of doing so a thousand times. Roger doesn't want to watch her die, and he could see how much paler and smaller she got every day. He let it happen, because he's the one that is afraid. Then he'd accused Mark of the same thing to defend himself before running off. Worse yet, it's true. Mark doesn't need drugs or death to isolate himself. He does it anyway, and Roger has never been able to figure out why but he's seen it happen. When Maureen started cheating, it isn't like Mark didn't know but he ignored it. With April's death, and how he distances them from it so quickly. He probably did it with Angel, but Roger didn't stick around long enough to see.

 

The fact that it is true is what makes it worse. The truth gets under people's skin, upsets them in ways that lying can't. That is what Roger is afraid of as he heads up the stairs to the loft. That he's made Mark hate him, and in that he probably figured out damn fast that he doesn't need Roger as a best friend. What did Roger ever do to save him?

 

It takes a while before he can do it, knock at the loft door. Maybe Mark isn't here at all. Roger isn't the only one who can run away, is he? Roger never called, and it isn't like Mark even had a chance to tell him before he cut this whole, fucked up bohemian life loose and moved up with that whole Buzzline job. It's only been a few weeks, but a lot can happen in a few weeks. Your girlfriend could test positive for HIV and take her own life instead of letting the virus win while you shake and moan from the drugs your best friend wouldn't let you have. You could fall in love with a girl you never meant before and lose her a week later in a fit of jealousy. A friend's partner could die, you could hurt your best friend and then pack up and leave for Santa Fe. Roger knows from experience. Life happens all at once.

 

He knocks again, becoming more and more sure that Mark has simply left all together. What did he have left here? He isn't like Roger. He's still healthy and has time, so why would he stick around when he doesn't have a best friend to worry about. Roger is set on giving up, walking away and finding Mimi. Then there is a click, and the door is sliding away between them.

 

Mark pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Hey," he says, expression painfully neutral as Roger stands there, waiting for whatever it is Mark is going to yell at him for. It's how they left, so it makes sense that it is what Roger would come back to. "It's good to have you back. Come on inside, Rog. You look ready to freeze to death."


	4. Months Come & Go

It’s really unfair.

 

Angel knows she can play whatever role she needs. She played a guy for fifteen years until she got sick of acting, but she can still manage it when she has to. She knows the character she should be playing now. She should be a good girl. She should be strong and hopeful, just like she is always pretending to be for everyone else. A beautiful, peaceful, wilting flower, that is what they expect her to be and what she wants to be for them. But, when it comes down to it, it’s really unfair that she is stuck with this part.

 

“Mark…” She feels Mark’s hand tighten around her own, small and weak and almost slipping out of his when he relaxes his grip again. She isn’t even aware, really, that she is calling for him until he squeezes her fingers in his, and she can feel his heart beat in his hand. “Mark?”

 

“Don’t worry.” Slowly, she opens her eyes and it hurts anyway despite how careful she is as the light pours into her vision. She sees him, but he’s blurred at the edges, just the shape and colors of Mark but nothing more. She blinks, trying to make him clear and still all she gets is a distorted Mark, not the real thing. “Collins will be back,” he says, and she can hear his voice but she wants to see him. She wants to climb out of this bed and put on a dress and go dancing. She wants to steal away to the mall and sling fake fur around her neck and pretend with Mimi to be rich for the day, trotting around to all the stores and fitting themselves with shoes and jewelry they can’t afford. All those things she will miss out on, things that make her want to scream and cry because even if you forget all the regrets in your live, it doesn’t mean you won’t miss these things terribly.

 

“Joanne took him home to get some sleep.” Mark keeps talking, his voice small and with false comfort that makes the pain beating at Angel even worse. Like it does, when your friends know it is hopeless but are forcing their spirits up anyway. They’re all playing characters like that, Angel supposed, but It only makes her feel worse about her own role. “But he’ll be back soon,” Mark explains, and he puts on this smile as he speaks. It’s the weakest smile Angel has ever seen.

 

“Mark,” she whispers again, and again he squeezes her hand. And he keeps that smile on, nervous and terrible. Angel has only known Mark for a few months now, but…

 

But…

 

It’s really unfair.

 

“Mark, honey…” She doesn’t recognize her own voice. All the valley girl, the squeal and the excitement, it has all fallen away somehow. It’s rough around all the edges now, so unused and so beat down that when she hears herself she isn’t sure she is the one speaking at all.

 

He must hear her, though, and he must hear the same voice that she does because that smile, as horrible as it is, slips away. “Yeah?” And he is the one that sounds uncertain of his own voice. She can’t remember ever hearing him so tense, except for maybe that time when Maureen came to cry on his shoulder over losing Joanne. Maureen, playing the part of a strong and confident lead, who needs other people and reassurance and love, clinging to Mark so desperately. Angel remembers glancing over at them and seeing how much it ached for him to hold her and tell her that Joanne still loved her. “Do… Do you need someone? Should I get a doctor?”

 

Angel needs time. She’s too young and she just found them. Collins and the way he can lift her mood no matter how bad things are getting, Roger and Mimi with their nervous steps towards each other, Maureen and Joanne trying to find the happy middle ground, and Mark with his smile that looks like he’s tearing himself up inside. When he’s comforting the girl he still loves to send her back to his girlfriend. When he sees Mimi with a needle and can’t find a way to tell his best friend. And now, when he’s holding the hand of a girl to young to die. Angel wonders what part Mark plays. He wears that look far too often.

 

“No, baby.” Angel shakes her head, or tries to but everything hurts so much. Every joint aches and every muscles is strained just lying here, dying in a hospital bed that is sterile and colorless. The exact opposite of her. This isn’t where she wants to be when she dies. She doesn’t want to die at all. She still has so much she has to see and learn and love about these people. She deserves more than a few months. She wants more than a few lifetimes. But this is what she gets, slipping away, holding the hand of a broken young cameraman who is like her. Much too happy, much to hopeful to find himself here. “I just want to talk.”

 

“Oh.” It looks like Mark would prefer she needed a doctor. She knows he hates it here, and she doesn’t fault him for that. It isn’t that he hates her, but that he just can’t deal with watching her die. Watching her must be like watching Collins and Mimi and Roger all at the same time. She wonders if she could do it, be strong if they got sick first. She might be able to pretend, but honestly, she isn’t sure she could. “Are… Do you want-”

 

“No.” This time it is Angle who squeezes Mark’s hand. It’s so light she isn’t sure he feels it and it takes more out of her than three nights drumming ever did. “I just want you to talk to me,” she explains in that broken voice, watching Mark hover over her bed, stroking her hand. It must hurt, not to have his camera right now to protect him. The same way that having Collins protects Angel. “About before I met you.”

 

“About Collins?” He asks, and she can see a small smile tugging at his lips before the whole situation sets back in with him. She’s sure he must have quite the stories to tell about her anarchist.

 

She shakes her head again, and this time manages the slightest of movement. “Just about you, honey,” she whispers, her voice softer than the beep of the machines beside her. She should probably be thankful for that beep, but honestly she wants to tear out all the plugs and throw these white sheets away and walk right out of here. “I want to hear about you. Your first film, how you came here, about Roger and Maureen. Anything you can think of. You’re the storyteller after all,” she adds with a small smile.

 

She wants to hear all those months that she hadn’t known then, all the months she didn’t get to love them. At least it will make her time with them seem stretched out, like she has just a few more months with them than she really got. And Mark smiles, a little more confident this time, like her understand. “Do you know?” He asks, “What it’s like to learn to tango with an erection?”

 

And Angel gets to laugh and live for a while longer.


	5. Years Gone By

If Roger gets drunk, he's more honest. It isn't hard to do, pretty much anyone in the loft is willing to get drunk when it's cheap or paid for. Roger happens to get honest when he's drunk, so if someone asked him then, he'd say that, yeah, he knows Mark the best. Since he moved to New York and Collins took him in, practically since that day (Roger has a selective memory) Mark has been his best friend, so it stands that Roger is the one who understands him. He gets why Mark's parents annoy him so much, and knows why sometimes Mark has to film something so that he can hide from it and deal with it at the same time.

 

Years ago, Roger had been the first band that Mark had seen in the city, and when he got off stage Mark looked more alive than Roger had ever seen this goofy kid from Scarsdale. He had been smiling and shaking and said, loud enough for the whole bar to hear, "That is what I mean." Mark was glowing over his camera at Roger that night, and sure people were staring but Mark didn't mind at all. "That is what I need on film, you know," he explained to Roger, and Roger got it even if Mark didn't make sense.

 

Roger’s the filmmaker’s best friend, so he knows him best.

 

If you asked Maureen, she'd tell you (very proudly) that of course the only one who really gets Mark is herself. He loved her, after all, and they still love each other in some ways, maybe Mark more than she loves him anymore but it is still there, so Maureen is more privy to those inner feelings of the rather closed-off cameraman than anyone else. She knows what he saw in her and why they fit together so well, and she can still bring those feelings back if she wants, whenever she wants. She knows things about him that others don't, like why he likes to fuck with the lights off and how he can't sleep without curling up against something. It's just things that only she knows.

 

Years ago, she was the first girl that he said, "I love you," to, not counting his mom, of course. She'd been dancing, not to any particular song or with any particular person. Just dancing in that way that use to draw all eyes to her, but that was back in Hicksville and not in New York, where Maureen wasn't anything special and just seemed to blend in with everyone else. Mark still thought she was amazing and wonderful and special, though, even in the city. She never seemed to blend into everything, at least not to him, and he never did to her, so they kept each other from disappearing.

 

Clearly, he loves her, so she must know him best.

 

Collins has never been able to spend that much time with the others, always having been a little outside their group like a teacher to his students, but he is sure that in some ways, because there are so many ways to know a person, he knows Mark the best. Maybe just because that is his job; to notice things. Marx noticed how people were alienated and self repressed, Lacan noticed how language seemed to shape a person in the same way Freud claimed birth did, and Althusser noticed how we're all caught in an inescapable ideology. It all comes down to noticing things, and Collins has taken some notice of Mark.

 

Years ago, he was the first teacher Mark really trusted or liked. At least, that is what he told him after his seminar. "You just seem to actually get it," Mark told him that first time they meant, and Collins was more than happy to listen to a student who wasn't bitching about their grade. "You do this for more than academia, but because...." And Mark could have gone on for days, but Collins gave him his phone number and said to call him if he wanted to talk. He's the reason that Mark came to New York, the reason he finally pushed himself over and gave up trying to be someone he wasn't.

 

Yes, Collins would like to think he has some idea of Mark.

 

It may sound silly, and she would never say it out loud, but sometimes Joanne is pretty sure that she is the one who knows Mark the best. Okay, they're not the best of friends or really much of friends at all, but they get each other. At least Joanne is sure that they do. They understand each other, because they have both been through Maureen, and once you've been through that you pretty much need a support group of others who get why exactly you're in love with this girl to the point of being a masochist. There is something that pushes them towards her, something that draws them in and only Joanne and Mark can really understand that about each other.

 

It's like the first time they met it's at the actors workshop Maureen had gone to, and Joanne just planned on stopping by right after to take her out for lunch. She doesn't mean to run into Mark, standing at the door waiting on his girlfriend. This was before Maureen gets the courage to come out, to leave him. Mark didn't know her, and Joanne only knew about him from what Maureen told her. She recognizes him, though, because God he really sort of does look like a very fucked up teddy bear. "Hey," she says, looking past him and into the door he's standing by. "Have you seen Maureen?" She just said that, and Mark got this look. That look that Joanne understood perfectly well, and she could never explain to anyone else.

 

It’s just something they share, and it’s something that only Joanne gets about Mark.

 

If you asked Benny, he'd probably think this is some sort of joke, but if pushed than, yeah, he'll admit that no matter what everyone else thinks he has always been the one who knows Mark the best. Sure, the others may have the advantage of living with him, but Benny knew him first and he knew him before he put up that wall that he started to build up when he came to the city and found out that living on film isn't so easy.

 

Years ago, when they first came to New York Mark’s mom decided she had to come by and see. Benny had been there, had been the one to save Mark when his mom had a near panic attack at seeing where he little baby lived. "It could be a lot worse," he told Mark when he finally managed to get his mom to go back to her hotel. Mark still didn't calm back down, even with her gone, and Benny could see him annoyed and scared, pacing the loft for the next few days. Not because of his mom but because he still felt like he's a part of that life, just a kid playing like a bohemian in the city and Mark is terrified off that.

 

That is something only Benny saw. Only he really gets Mark.

 

There are moments when Mimi thinks that maybe she is the one who knows Mark best, but that is because these are the moments when it seems like Mark just knows her the best. Even better than Angel had, and more than Roger ever seemed to try. Mark just seems to get her so easily that Mimi feels they must have some sort of understanding of one another, some kind of connection. What Mimi and Roger have with their disease and drugs, Mark and her have with Roger and being left behind, so sometimes Mimi can just look at Mark and she feels like she knows him so perfectly.

 

Two years, what feels like forever, Mimi remembers the first time she ran to him after one of her and Roger’s big fights. Who knows what fight it was, or what it was about since, back then, back when Roger was still secretly terrified and looking for any reason out, almost anything she did seem to lead to a fight. One of those times though, she decided to go up to the loft as Roger storms down to the street and who knows where. She went up this time and finds Mark, and she cried to him and he didn't make her leave, even when she knew she was being annoying. He just let her talk, and he listened without ever judging. And then when she was to exhausted to keep crying, he told her about Roger and April and the shows and the drugs and the first time they met and some day they went to the Cat Scratch Club together and the first time Roger must have seen Mimi, as far as he knew. He seemed to know exactly what to say to make Mimi feel better, and so while she's falling asleep on the couch and Mark was tucking her in, she found herself feeling like he'd known her forever, and everything just fit with them.

 

They just understand each other, and there really isn’t any reason behind that. Mimi just knows Mark.

 

Just because she didn't get to know him very long, doesn't mean she didn't know him at all. In fact, Angel might know Mark better than anyone else. Not because of any real reason, but she feels like he opened up to her, poured everything into her without ever meaning to, things he probably didn't want her to know at all. But then she did, so maybe it's Angel who knows him the best after that.

 

Mark could still remember last year, and the last year they had with Angel. There are these nights, when she is trapped in the hospital bed (or at least she feels trapped, since she can't seem to even get herself up without her whole body collapsing back down), and Collins actually leaves her side because someone forced him to go eat or sleep. Those are nights when Mark would sit with her sometimes, and Angel would ask about him. Not anything too private, just ask for some stories, trying to cling to all those moments she wouldn't have with him. And Mark would tell her these little anecdotes, one that he might not have even thought about, but Angel would get more from what he told her, who he talked about. Angel would know more about him after those nights than he even meant to tell her.

 

Mark would say, maybe, that Angel listen to his stories. So Angel knows him best.

 

Mark watches his film flicker over the wall of his room. Trying to figure out what else to cut and edit and move around. He knows these scenes without looking up anymore, the flicker of the projector all he needs to figure out where in the movie they are. A movie, that is what his life seems to be for the last few years, and this is what it comes down to. Figuring out which parts of the last few years are worth keeping.

 

Flicking over the gray wall, Mark just sits and stares without watching at all. This is starting to feel useless. Like a cry for help when you’re asleep, and no one can really hear. It’s just lost in your nightmare, like years of his life are lost in this film that no one will understand.

 

You can't make people feel the energy that Roger had when he sings, the way he is so in love with his art that it doesn't matter how bad the lyrics are or how the audience is almost nonexistence because all that matters is the music. He could show Maureen dancing, but could anyone really get how it feels, going from being the most amazing one at your school to being swallowed whole in New York, with no one who seems to care or even want to try and pick you up again? God, Maureen. She is on his wall now, laughing as she takes a bow. Can a movie make everyone understand what it feels like only him and Joanne could ever get about Maureen?

 

Mark looks up at the film, and there is Collins' bright smile, smoke flowing out from his lips as he talks to the cameras like he'd talk to Mark before. Inspirational truths that Mark had cling to in college, and the final kick that had him giving up being his parent's perfect son and instead just being himself. Can his film do that for someone else?

 

Maybe it's too personal. Mark frowns, hand lying on the projector to turn it off, but never reaching the switch. Maybe these are stories you can only tell your friends, things that no one else can understand. And that is terrifying to him, that all this work might be nothing more than a journal if no one else can get anything from it. That his friend's lives are nothing, not worth other people's time or love, when they're all that Mark has anymore.

 

The film flickers over the wall with everything they are, and Mark is starting to realize that no one will really understand just how important this is to him.


End file.
